​[3] The body, as it is, could not on its own as dead matter, see anything, or hear, feel, smell and taste without a living soul within it. It is therefore only a necessary instrument of the soul, thus built and properly fitted for the soul to use it in the outside world. By means of the body it can see outwardly, hear and feel which is unpleasant and pleasant. It can move from one place to another and can do manifold work with the hands.[4] The driver of the body’s limbs is the intellect of the heart and its will; because the body does not have on its own a mind or a will, except if the soul itself melts into the flesh by its worldly and sensuous desires, and gets thereby very much lost in its flesh, so that it therein loses the consciousness of its spiritual identity. Then of course its entire intellect and will has also become completely flesh. In this case the soul is nearly as good as completely dead, and if it hears something of a pure spiritual independence and of a spiritual life after death of the body, it considers it to be absurd.[5] But even such a fleshly soul does not actually die after the painful death of its body, but continues to live in the spiritual world; but its life is then just as meager as its recognition and self-awareness in a purely spiritual sphere. Now, such a soul continues to live of course just as in a somewhat brighter dream and often does not know that it has already lived in anotherworld, but it lives and acts according to its accustomed sensuality. And if it is admonished by brighter spirits revealing themselves to it, it does not believe them and mocks and treats those who tell her the truth with contempt.